Thursday, January 20 2005 13:51 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Port Blair: Looters are taking away, what the tsunami has left behind, from thousands of locked homes across this archipelago and to rub salt to the already ravaged economy of the Island panic-stricken people have started withdrawing all their bank savings to leave for the mainland.

Refugees from worst hit Car Nicobar, Katchal and Campbell Bay, once tiny specks of green in the Andaman and Nicobar map, have been complaining that all their assets left behind in the now deserted Islands have been stolen by some of those who chose not to be evacuated.

"We ran away from the Island. But we had telephoned our neighbours who stayed back and found out that the looters have broken open our house and left behind nothing," says Sweta Seth, who was evacuated from the Campbell Bay area with her three children, husband and mother-in-law.

Squatting in the School Line relief camp, her mother-in-law recounts how she and her husband had constructed the house and saved every penny to buy household gadgets like television, refrigerator and washing machine. "All that is gone, gold ornaments, cash and even the last piece of clothing in our almirah were taken away," she says amidst sobs.

A large number of complaints are pouring in from each of the 36 populated Islands in the Andaman and Nicobar group of 573 isles but the police authorities cannot do much with many of their outposts either unmanned or washed away.